Skin Manifestations of Patients with Liver Cirrhosis

Lee, Hong Tak; Yoon, Tae Young; Chang, Seung Ho

Abstract

BACKGROUND
The high level of susceptibility of patients with liver cirrhosis (LC) to septicemic infection is thought to be due to decreased reticuloendothelial function and irnpairment of several components of cell mediated and humoral immunity. It is well known that LC may cause many characteristic skin changes including jaundice, spider angioma, palmar erythema, xanthelasrna and nail changes such as clubbing and white nails.
OBJECTIVE
AND METHODS: During a 7 month period frorn April to October 1995, 100 patients who had been diagnosed as having LC were evaluated for the duration of their LC, the associated diseases they had apart from LC and various skin manifestations. Also, we performed the tuberculin test in 20 patients with LC and evaluated the correlation of the tuberculin test with severity of LC divided into 3 groups according to the Childs classification.
RESULTS
The results are summarized as follows ; 1. The most frequent duration of LC was under 5 years (74%). 2. The most common associated disease of patients with LC was upper GI bleeding including esophageal varix (24 cases). Also, diabetes mellitus (13 cases) and hepatic coma (11 cases) were observed. 3. Jaundice (82 cases) was the most frequent skin rnanifestation of patients with LC. In addition, vascular changes (81 cases) and various nail changes (69 cases) were observed. Onychomychosis was the most common nail change of patients with LC. 4. 60% of the patients who were given the tuberculin test showed anergy, and the frequency of anergy increased in proport on to the severity of LC. However, it was not significant statistically (p> 0.05 ).
CONCLUSIONS
Some of the skin manifestations help in the diagnosis of LC. Also, increased frequency of tuberculin test anergy in proportion to the severity of LC is thought to be related to decreased cell mediated immunity, although statistically it is not significant.